Meditation on the Fall of Icarus

Abstract

Lieutenant (j.g) Karl W. Kirchwey, Jr., 1944 Meditation on the Fall of Icarus KARL KIRCHWEY I. all my life, I have been fascinated by aviation and the history of human flight. It is possible that this interest is genetic. The uncle for whom I am named, my father’s younger brother by two years, was a Navy fighter pilot flying off the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise in World War II. He was a Lieutenant (junior grade) killed at the age of twenty-two during the first day of the invasion of the island of Saipan, in the Northern Marianas. He was a member of Fighting Squadron Ten, called “The Grim Reapers,” the logo for which was a skeleton in a steep dive wearing a flying helmet and goggles, holding a blood-stained scythe. On June 15, 1944, his plane was shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft fire—or it may have been brought down by friendly fire from a U.S. Navy ship bombarding the island—and crashed into the sea. His body was never recovered. He was, according to the usual custom, listed as missing for a year, and then he was declared dead. He died twelve years before I was born, but he has paid me posthumous visits every fifteen or twenty years. His present visit may be his last, for although he lives now in a world beyond time, I do not. In Greek mythology, after having murdered his nephew Talos in a fit of jealousy, the celebrated inventor Daedalus took refuge on the island of Crete and made his skills available to King Minos. When he later wished to escape from Crete with his son Icarus, Daedalus devised wings for both of them, feathers sized just like the coverts of birds’ wings and held together with stitching and wax. Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation of the passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes both the miraculous moment of first flight and the specificity of Daedalus’ parental concern: arion 29.3 winter 2022 2 meditation on the fall of icarus As soon as that the worke was done, the workman by and by Did peyse his bodie on his wings, and in the Aire on hie Hung wavering: and did teach his sonne how he should also flie. I warne thee (quoth he) Icarus, a middle race to keepe. For if thou hold too low a gate, the dankenesse of the deepe Will overlade thy wings with wet. And if thou mount too hie, The Sunne will sindge them. Therefore see between them both thou flie. (Golding 8.270–6) Daedalus’ emphasis on the importance of following his instructions and on steering a middle course echoes that of the sun god Helios to his son Phaëthon in the other great Greek myth about a father-son flying team. “I will guide thee right,” says Daedalus in Golding’s account, and: In giving counsel to his sonne to order well his flight, He fastned to his shoulders twaine a paire of uncoth wings. And as he was in doing it and warning him of things, His aged cheekes were wet, his hands did quake, in fine he gave His sonne a kisse the last that he alive should ever have. (Golding 8.282–5) The detail of Daedalus’ tears is poignant: Icarus’ doom seems foreordained, the child’s inability to follow his father’s advice . And it is characteristic of human aviation that, even in this early instance, it is neither an entirely solitary pursuit nor an entirely communal one. It is both. The operational ceiling of my uncle’s F6F3 Hellcat fighter plane was 38,000 feet, approximately that of a modern commercial airliner, although he had no heated, pressurized cabin, and had to breathe oxygen through a mask. The planes climbed well and were highly maneuverable but, being heavily armored, they dove “like falling safes” (Stafford, 380). On the day he was shot down, my uncle was closely followed by another pilot called his wingman. The idea was that planes flying in pairs had a better chance of surviving in the disorientation of combat: The acrid smell of gunpowder filled their cockpits as...